Ecological World-Building: From Science Fiction to Virtual Reality

To me, it’s very important to think about speculative fiction and worldmaking as two approaches for better orienting ourselves to the present, rather than conjuring escapist utopian futures that will never arrive.

Artists excel at creating worlds. They do this first for themselves and then, when they share their work, for others. Of course, world-building means creating everything—not only making things inside the world but also the surrounding world itself—the language, style, rules, and architecture.

While we know that our imaginations shape our sociocultural experience through the creation of worlds, modernity thrives by throwing tight constraints around it, degenerating our ability and capacity to imagine radically new futures into being. This ontological war against possibility is ‘defuturing’ — there are less futures available to us; or put... See more